Future Defense Minister Reopens Conscription Debate

Deutsche Welle German radio, Germany's defense minister-designate, Franz-Josef Jung, wants to introduce general conscription for the armed forces, paving the way for conflict with his SPD coalition partners, who are against such a plan.  
 
Although conscription currently exists in Germany, it only applies to young men and does not necessarily affect all of them, since the numbers called to service changes annually depending on the need.  
 
The system is however generally considered as being good for the German armed forces and good for German democracy.  
 
But now Franz-Josef Jung, the Christian Democratic (CDU) politician who has been designated Germany's future defense minister, has said a general conscription should be introduced that would apply to all young men and women and would call upon them to serve in either the armed forces or a social institution.  
 
Jung's stance has led to friction with the CDU's grand coalition parters, the Social Democrats (SPD). The SPD parliamentary group's spokesperson for defense issues, Rainer Arnold, has called the suggestions “completely off base.”  
 
The union bloc of parties has also expressed its desire to allow the armed forces, or Bundeswehr, to be deployed in the future within the country in the case of a terrorist threat.  
 
Germany's current constitution prohibits such domestic deployments and to institute such a policy, lawmakers would have to amend the country's “Basic Law,” something Jung and his union colleagues have said they will pursue.  
 
From Hesse to Berlin  
 
Jung, 56, is a Christian Democrat and comes to the federal government in Berlin from regional politics in the state of Hesse, where he was a close confidante of Premier Roland Koch, a powerful CDU figure.  
 
Koch ousted the Social Democrats and Greens from power in Hesse in 1999 in an impressive regional triumph for the Christian Democrats, one year after they had been humiliatingly beaten by Chancellor Schr